Gus (Mark Margolis, left) is confronted by youngest son Vito (Joseph J. Parks, right) and Vito's wife Sooze (Tina Chilip) in Tony Kushner's "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures" at Berkeley Rep less

Gus (Mark Margolis), the patriarch of the Marcantonio clan, calls his family together to tell them he plans to end his life in Tony Kushner's "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures" at Berkeley Rep less

Gus (Mark Margolis), the patriarch of the Marcantonio clan, calls his family together to tell them he plans to end his life in Tony Kushner's "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with ... more

You know you're in the hands of Tony Kushner when the characters are wrestling with big ideas in fraught situations, the laughter is plentiful and you leave feeling smarter than you were before. Such is the case with the West Coast premiere of "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures," which opened Wednesday at Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre.

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That's the good news about this intimate but sprawling family drama in which an aging communist longshoreman's children and their mates gather at his Brooklyn brownstone to confront his plans to kill himself. The play is too long at nearly four hours, even as revised by Kushner from its 2009 Minneapolis and 2011 New York productions. Some emotional entanglements don't register as strongly as the author seems to intend. But it's a richly rewarding and stimulating experience.

Don't expect to catch everything. At times, three or more conversations are taking place at once. And if the battles about socialism are easy to follow, in the ebb and flow of longtime Kushner collaborator Tony Taccone's smartly orchestrated stagings, the theological discussions are often hilariously opaque.

Taccone highlights key exchanges to focus attention on each of the family subplots, and his cast rewards the effort. It isn't all about the family patriarch's planned suicide, though the gravitas and caustic humor of Mark Margolis' Gus anchors the play with the pride of an autodidact, the combativeness of a labor organizer and an emotional evasiveness. Randy Danson echoes the last quality as his ex-nun sister.

It's a problem that all three siblings' partnerships are undergoing too similar strains. It's hard to sympathize with Pill's quandary because his intense self-obsession allows little room for anyone else. Above all, the immensity of Kushner's saga - echoed by the massive moving parts of Christopher Barecca's two-story set - diminishes the old-fashioned family drama within it.

But Kushner gradually establishes an emotional pull. A father-son scene with Gus and Pill gains prickly-tender resonance. A suicide-prep meeting, with Lovejoy's shaken Empty and Robynn Rodriguez in a rich cameo, merges the family and labor union themes to moving effect. And, as one expects of Kushner, "Guide" leaves you with a lot to think about.

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